Senior officials within the European Union are now demanding deportations increase amid a spike in illegal migrant arrivals into the bloc.
The European Commission is looking for the EU and its member states to increase the number of deportations enforced against illegal migrants.
Having seen a massive spike in illegal immigration back in 2015 and 2016, the union has once again seen a large spike in what it calls “irregular” border crossings, with hundreds of thousands of individuals entering the bloc in an uncontrolled manner last year.
Such a spike in arrivals also saw a spike in deportation orders, though, according to POLITICO, the EU has a problem with effectively removing illegal migrants from its territory, with only 24 per cent of the 342,100 people requested to be removed by European authorities actually being sent to a non-EU member nation in 2021.
It now appears Brussels wants to at least be seen as taking steps to remedy this situation, with the EU’s Home Affairs Commissioner, Ylva Johansson telling reporters on Wednesday that deportations from the bloc need to be increased.
“We are experiencing now an increase of irregular arrivals,” Johansson told reporters, emphasising that the bloc saw more than 330,000 people enter the bloc in an uncontrolled fashion last year.
She went on to say that most of the people crossing into Europe have no need for international protection, though made applications for asylum anyway despite not being eligible for it.
“This puts the asylum systems and our procedures and our reception capacities under huge pressure,” Johansson said. “And this comes on top of the war in Ukraine, and the four million Ukrainian refugees that we are currently hosting within our member states.”
“Of course, those that are not eligible to stay in the European Union have to be returned to their country of origin,” she went on to say, adding that the number of successful returns “needs to be increased”.
The Commissioner went on to say that she wanted the EU to establish more agreements with third-party nations to enable the return of illegal migrants, something which has been cited as a roadblock to deportations in the past.
Johansson also said that she was hoping for increased cooperation between EU institutions and authorities within individual member states to enable quick deportations, emphasising that this would be a major topic of conversation during a meeting of EU interior ministers on Thursday.
However, even if the EU does indeed want to increase the number of fraudulent migrants that end up being deported from the bloc, it will have to compete with more progressive elements within individual governments that seem to be reticent to get immigration under control.
For instance, authorities in Ireland have remained insistent that they will take an open borders approach to the ongoing surge of migrants and asylum seekers entering the country, with the number of deportations enforced by the country falling to extremely low levels in recent years.
This is despite the fact that the country has now almost completely run out of places to house migrants, with some on the island now warning of “mass” migrant homelessness now that the government — while continuing to take in foreign arrivals — has said that it can no longer provide many of them with housing.
“This is a horrifying situation which will likely mean a humanitarian crisis,” one pro-open borders NGO remarked regarding the situation. “New protection applicants, men and women, will not be accommodated.”
“Of additional concern is that it is likely to persist for at least several weeks and all adults, women as well as men, will not be offered accommodation,” it added.